By; OLADELE ADEDAYO, Ado-Ekiti
The Vice Chancellor, Federal University Oye-Ekiti (FUOYE), Prof. Abayomi Fasina, has decried alleged harassments by landowners against developers and handlers of federal government’s projects in the institution.
Fasina lamented that the ugly trend had largely affected completion of some of government’s projects and driving away investors, who had indicated interest in building structures that could have raised the bar of FUOYE’s facilities, but for the harassment by those he described as “Omo Onile”.
However, the Vice Chancellor disclosed that the university had secured full accreditation for the 48 courses being offered by the institution, saying this had built confidence and patronage for admission in the university.
Speaking at a press conference held at FUOYE on Tuesday marking the beginning of activities lined up for the one year of his appointment,Fasina urged the community leaders to warn those driving away contractors and developers under the facade of land ownership.
“Let me appeal to land owners to stop harassing contractors working with the federal government on this campus. Though, the matter was being handled by the police, but this should not continue because it is affecting development here on campus.
“Another menace was these local vigillant group called Egbon Adugbo, who were find of harassing my students by extorting money from them. This must stop. We are not going to take it lightly with them. We have told the Council of Chiefs and the matter is being looked into”.
The EKSU VC said through hardwork, timely promotion and brilliant scouting, the university now has 74 Professors and 51 Associate Professors, who are contributing hard to scholarship and giving the institution a good ranking globally.
“Some of these Professors were promoted when I got there as a Vice Chancellor and I have asked my lecturers to be hardworking, because my vision is to promote 100 lecturers to professorial level before the expiration of my tenure”.
Fasina added his administration had built twelve 300-seater lecture theatres for improved teaching and learning, saying: “My target is to build 10 of these structures annually to give over 27,000 students population the deserved comfort”.
In the area of contributions to agriculture and food security, the VC stated that his mission, is for the university to be able to feed Ekiti through commercial farming, clarifying that the institution had procured tractors, ploughing and harrowing machines, and other modern farm implements to achieve this.
“We are going to give the faculty of Agriculture a matching order to start mass production of food crops and our target is to spend part of the proposed N400 million grant from the CBN on farming.The faculty has all the implements and we expect that they can start this by feeding the university community and move up to feed the whole of Ekiti”.
He explained that the university had gone fully digitalised in tackling security threats and that the institution was getting the deserved and expected results.
The Soil Scientist, said the university is mapping out strategy to build more residential buildings on campus, lamenting that only 1,400 students are currently resident on campus.
He added that the university is negotiating with landlords to charge fairly and stop extorting the students through imposition of arbitrary rents.
